Your website helped me get control over what my wife and parents were exposing my four year old daughter to, by establishing a neutral source of extremely valuable information. It became very easy to set guidelines thanks to your rating system and the wide range of titles reviewed.
The new 3D animation style and cutesy animal characters are dangerously subversive. My mom thought I was being a grinch until I made her read a review from CSM of the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie she wanted to show my daughter:
"There was a scene where the male Air Marshall (who was following them), woke up in a drunken haze (yes, there was a scene where shots and drinks were involved) with 2 new tattoos and in the bedroom or hotel room with another man (and all that that implied)."
There is just no way this stuff is age appropriate. I don't care how far the Overton window has shifted.
The Illumination Studios pictures are particularly insidious. I believe their content is generally inappropriate for young children, deleterious to moral character, culturally degenerate, etc. The character design aesthetics are offensive and stupefying. I wasn't surprised to find the same creative oversight involved in the duff Chipmunks pictures.
Case in point is Sing, which when I looked it up, it turns out the movie is notorious for culturally stereotyped presentation of Japanese people, and animal singers who shake their butts around. There's no way young children can appropriately contextualize either of these things.
>There was a scene where the male Air Marshall (who was following them), woke up in a drunken haze (yes, there was a scene where shots and drinks were involved) with 2 new tattoosand in the bedroom or hotel room with another man (and all that that implied)."
This appears to be a PG rated movie. This is nothing new. Let's take a step back nearly 25 years and check out things that happen in 'The Nightmare Before Christmas', a movie with the same rating:
Finkelstein makes himself a female doll.
A detached leg is used to seduce a villain, whom promptly begins to engage in foot play.
There is a torture chamber crossed with a casino, where the casino games determine the level of torture inflicted.
There's a skinned head, various detached body parts, brains, etc.
Let's go back farther! Watership Down - 40 years ago.
Doe rabbits fancied by one of the villains are offered up in compensation for his efforts.
References to the needs of doe rabbits to sustain the warren
Various bits of violence/gore with the rabbits, including a rabbit choking on a snare and coughing up blood
Mild profanity - use of 'Damn' and 'Piss', with Fuck replaced with 'Frisk' in several instances.
>There is just no way this stuff is age appropriate. I don't care how far the Overton window has shifted.
PG as a rating is specifically not any sort of indication to age appropriateness. Emotional development of children in the ages in question is going to vary drastically, and the whole point is that it is then suggested that the parents, knowing best what content their children will be able to handle, make the decision. The maturity level of content in PG movies has, if anything, dropped over the years.
Note that I am not questioning your choices on what you find appropriate for your children, just your interpretation of what PG means and whether or not the Overton window has shifted.
Your comparison examples prove the points your arguing against.
Both your examples are about fantastical violence and/or animal predator/prey violence - things that have little or no connection to a kid's real life growing up. It's not hard to dissociate real life from a casino torture chamber and a skinned head. What influence could this have on a child - make him make his own casino torture chamber?
Grandparent complained about normalization of heavy drinking, tattooing, casual sex, deviant sex, dangerous sex, and related forms of degenerate behavior. These are things that kids must deal with growing up, and which they will be tempted to participate in, to their own detriment. It's totally different and much more insidious than cartoon or animal predator/prey violence.
There's suggestions of casual sex and outright sexual behavior in Nightmare Before Christmas, and misogyny/rape in Watership Down. Nightmare Before Christmas includes some suggestions of using alcohol or other drugs on some of the villains.
What evidence is there that normalizing violence is less problematic to a child?
>heavy drinking,
Sure, that's not a great thing to normalize.
>tattooing,
What's wrong with tattoos?
>casual sex,
Again, something suggested in other PG movies from farther back. If your kids can handle it, they can watch it. If not, don't let them. That's what PG has always meant. It's not graphic, it doesn't show any of the foreplay, therefor it fits with the standard of PG that has existed forever.
>deviant sex,
Wait, what? Two men having sex is now deviant sex? Uh, yeah, not gonna agree there.
>dangerous sex,
Again, because it's two men? Where are you going with this?
>and related forms of degenerate behavior.
The only degenerate behavior on this list is the heavy drinking, and even that is being fairly generous to you - plenty of people have nights where they drink heavily and aren't degenerate and don't let it impact their life.
>It's totally different and much more insidious than cartoon or animal predator/prey violence.
You're making pretty huge statements here without any evidence to back it up. I don't know how much of an impact that the sort of scene in Alvin and the Chipmunk's would have on a child - I would guess probably not much, as much of the implications discussed are likely to fly right over their head - but we do know that violence, even cartoon violence, has an affect on children. http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/child-adolescent-psychiatry/...
PG movies have had this sort of content for decades. PG has never meant 'You can just show any of your young kids this.' - that is what the G rating is for. PG has always meant that there are things that you might find questionable for your child and that your parental discretion should be exercised. It's not insidious.
Just on the tattoos point... tattoos are like starting smoking. Not morally wrong, but they have permanent consequences that children are ill-equipped to judge.
(To be honest, I’d go further and claim that a lot of adults don’t grasp the consequences of tattoos either).
But kids also shouldn't drive, and no one is calling for movies with people driving to receive a rating higher than PG ;)
I'm being facetious here, but only a little - the point shouldn't be to eliminate any behavior we don't want kids to emulate from the media they consume. It's simply not possible.
This is funny to read. Kids stuff has been getting tamer and tamer over the years. Check out the early 2Oth Century Disney cartoons, the original Popeye, etc.
Your website helped me get control over what my wife and parents were exposing my four year old daughter to, by establishing a neutral source of extremely valuable information. It became very easy to set guidelines thanks to your rating system and the wide range of titles reviewed.
The new 3D animation style and cutesy animal characters are dangerously subversive. My mom thought I was being a grinch until I made her read a review from CSM of the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie she wanted to show my daughter:
"There was a scene where the male Air Marshall (who was following them), woke up in a drunken haze (yes, there was a scene where shots and drinks were involved) with 2 new tattoos and in the bedroom or hotel room with another man (and all that that implied)."
There is just no way this stuff is age appropriate. I don't care how far the Overton window has shifted.
The Illumination Studios pictures are particularly insidious. I believe their content is generally inappropriate for young children, deleterious to moral character, culturally degenerate, etc. The character design aesthetics are offensive and stupefying. I wasn't surprised to find the same creative oversight involved in the duff Chipmunks pictures.
Case in point is Sing, which when I looked it up, it turns out the movie is notorious for culturally stereotyped presentation of Japanese people, and animal singers who shake their butts around. There's no way young children can appropriately contextualize either of these things.